Class and the monarchy

To The Daily Telegraph

Older readers may have memories of the Queen’s coronation in 1953. I recall waiting for an Underground train, only to find the carriage full of the nobility in their robes, as central London roads were still closed. A friendly duke moved up for me to sit down and explained that he had put sandwiches inside his coronet, as he remembered being hungry at George VI’s coronation. I held his train while we walked along the dirty platform and he hobbled in his satin buckled shoes with heels. I will never forget the sight of the up escalator, with each peer holding the ermine-and-velvet train of the one in front. Jenny Selby-Green, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

To the Financial Times

Britain’s majority support for the monarchy is both surprising and unsurprising. Surprising in the sense that more Britons than not are in favour of such a shockingly outdated construct. And unsurprising in that this support reflects a belief widely held; that the royal family is an ingrained part of British culture and tradition – a symbol of this country’s past and power, and a unifying entity that people can get behind.

The answer to this conundrum lies within the fact that the Queen and the rest of the royal family have become two very distinct things. The former is the nucleus of our state and an individual whom it has become almost socially unacceptable to criticise. The latter is the undesirable jelly that comes hand-inhand with our supposedly rock-solid monarch.

I urge people to ask themselves a simple question: what are we actually celebrating? Do not be fooled by the various royal charitable causes and good deeds. These are necessary steps that the royal family must take to survive, and are nothing more than ways to conceal the bygone elitism that the monarchy represents. And this is how the platinum jubilee is just the monarchy’s latest example of this approach to survival. Arthur Instone, London